Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World book cover

Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

Hardcover – April 2, 2019

by
Price
$16.59
Format
Hardcover
Pages
256
Publisher
Harvard Business Review Press
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1633696303
Dimensions
6 x 1 x 9.5 inches
Weight
1.15 pounds

Description

" Nine Lies About Work , by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, the year's best management book, challenges the assumptions that underlie contemporary managerial practices, many of which date back to Drucker's day. In doing so, the book offers a glimpse of a new management paradigm that may prove to be better suited to the times." -- strategy+business magazine Named one of "Our 10 favorite new books for people managers" by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Managers) One of the Financial Times "Business Books of the Month" Named a Bloomberg Businessweek pick Named one of "14 business books everyone will be reading in 2019" by Business Insider Named one of "10 Leadership Books to Watch for in 2019" by the Washington Post Named one of "10 Business Books You Need to Read in 2019" by Inc. magazine Named one of "The 19 New Leadership Books to Read in 2019" by Adam Grant on LinkedIn " Nine Lies is utterly readable, often entertaining, and not just polite, but carefully reasoned and argued using some unusual real-world examples and even some from literature." - Human Resource Executive (hrexecutive.com) "leads to some free thinking about the way we do our jobs and how we can approach what we do in a different way." -- Financial Times "If a business book teaches me something new--and offers a fresh perspective on leadership--then I know it's a rare find in the category. Nine Lies About Work is just such a book. It's so thought provoking, I contacted the authors to speak with them directly." -- Forbes "…should be on every boss's bookshelf." -- Management Today "a stimulating, no-nonsense, research-based look at things you likely believe that aren't true – and how to apply the new findings." -- The Globe and Mail "The act of work is human. Leading and following and working together is about human interaction and human relationships. The workplace, and the marketplace beyond it, is about emotions and attention and the desire to be seen. It is about trust and, yes, it is about love. I am always grateful to be reminded of that, to see it again clearly, to have it acknowledged. Nine Lies About Work is a great reminder, and a great guide." -- 800 CEO READ "Give a copy of this book to everyone in your organization who's leading a team and make it essential reading." -- The Hamilton Spectator "If you're looking for a refreshing read that challenges the conventional wisdom of the business world, this is a book for your shelf." -- TD magazine (Association for Talent Development) "There is much we can learn about managing and leading our schools from its pages." -- Inside Higher Ed Advance Praise for Nine Lies About Work : In today's complex world, we instinctively seek simplicity. But in many cases, it's easier to lie to ourselves than it is to face the harsh reality--to see more of what want to see than how things really are. In Nine Lies About Work , Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall shine a light on just how dangerous those lies can be, especially in the context of our careers. Combining engaging stories about the modern workplace with nuanced quantitative analysis, Nine Lies About Work debunks the myths that surround leadership, planning, and balance in the corporate world. Everyone who reads this book is sure to be a better employee, but more importantly, a better leader. -- Gen. Stan McChrystal (Ret’d), United States Army Marcus Buckingham is a global researcher and thought leader focused on unlocking people's strengths, increasing their performance, and pioneering the future of how people work. He is head of all people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute and the author of several bestselling books, including StandOut 2.0: Assess Your Strengths, Find Your Edge, Win at Work (Harvard Business Review Press). Ashley Goodall is Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco. Previously he was Director and Chief Learning Officer, Leader Development, at Deloitte. He is the coauthor, with Marcus Buckingham, of two Harvard Business Review cover stories, "Reinventing Performance Management," in April 2015 and "The Feedback Fallacy," in March/April 2019. Change the world of work. Join the coalition: freethinkingleader.org Author social media/website info:Buckingham: MarcusBuckingham.com, @mwbuckinghamGoodall: linkedin.com/in/ashleygoodall/, @littleplatoons

Features & Highlights

  • Forget what you know about the world of work
  • You crave feedback. Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing.
  • These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies--distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking--that we encounter every time we show up for work. Nine lies, to be exact. They cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be.
  • But there are those who can get past the lies and discover what's real. These
  • freethinking leaders
  • recognize the power and beauty of our individual uniqueness. They know that emergent patterns are more valuable than received wisdom and that evidence is more powerful than dogma.
  • With engaging stories and incisive analysis, the authors reveal the essential truths that such freethinking leaders will recognize immediately: that it is the strength and cohesiveness of your team, not your company's culture, that matter most; that we should focus less on top-down planning and more on giving our people reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than trying to align people's goals we should strive to align people's sense of purpose and meaning; that people don't want constant feedback, they want helpful attention.
  • This is the
  • real
  • world of work, as it is and as it should be.
  • Nine Lies About Work
  • reveals the few core truths that will help you show just how good you are to those who truly rely on you.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(608)
★★★★
25%
(254)
★★★
15%
(152)
★★
7%
(71)
★
-7%
(-71)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Why making the world a better place requires the courage and wit to see it as it really is now

Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall selected an appropriate observation by Mark Twain to serve as a head note to the Introduction:  "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so."This is a human deficiency that Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham characterize (in 1955) as "the unknown unknowns." Buckingham and Goodall are freethinkers who wrote this book for others who are as eager as they are to challenge what James O'Toole refers to as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" in today's business world.

With regard to the book's title, they explain, "We could call these things 'misconceptions' or 'myths,' or even 'misunderstandings,' but because they are pushed at us so hard, almost as if they're used to steer us away from the world as it truly is, we'll call them 'lies.'" A freethinking leader "knows that the only way to make the world better tomorrow is to have the courage and wit to face up to how it really is today."

We all know that there have been several major changes in the traditional workplace in recent years.  Just as there are significant implications for individuals (Marcus Goldsmith suggests "What got you here won't get you there"), there are also significant implications for organizations, whatever their size and nature may be. Traditional assumptions need not be "lies" literally. Rather, they could be well-entrenched organizational habits, such as the chains that Warren Buffett characterizes as "too light to notice until they are too heavy to break." As indicated, Buckingham and Goodall focus on nine of them. They have much of great practical value to say about "how it really is today," devoting a separate chapter to each of the "lies."

This book ALSO has two especially valuable appendices. First, "The ADPRI's Global Study of Engagement"  co-authored by Mary Hayes, Frances Chumney, Corinne Wright, and Buckingham who share the results of nineteen-country study that measured the relative levels of engagement in each country, "and to identify the conditions at work that are most likely to attract and keep talented employees."  (See Pages 237-245) Next, "Seven Things We know For Sure at Cisco" co-authored Roxanne Bisby Davis and Goodall (247-260) in which they discuss the characteristics of Cisco's best teams as well as "the relationship between attention and performance, the relative importance of team and company in our experience of work, and much more." They focus on the seven highlights of what they have discovered so far.

The best business books are research-driven and that is certainly true of this one. Few of Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall's insights are head snappers. However, most of them repudiate assumptions about today's workplace culture that are either obsolete or flat-out wrong.

One of the greatest challenges that leaders now face is changing how they think about change. What got their organizations here won't even allow them to remain here, much less get to there, whatever and wherever "here" and "there" may be in today's global marketplace. There are no guarantees that how it really is now will remain true...and that's no lie.
42 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

A Well Needed and Refreshing Paradigm Shift In Management Theory

I really needed to read this book and absorb its message. It's very relatable, as a manager/leader who has had issues buying into a lot of concepts and approaches that are shoved down our throats at every seminar and in every book written about the subject.

I think the main idea of the book, if you had to summarize, would be that we need to stop treating our teammates as mini projects inherently flawed and in desperate need of our corrective action, but rather that we should see where each team member can really lean in and contribute the most high level output to the team and thus the company.

I don't expect to be able to immediately implement follow up ideas and steps to align my real work and surrounding teams with the ideas put forth in the book; however, I do plan to work on incremental steps towards doing things outlined in the book as better approaches. Change is often resisted, especially too much in too short of a time.

Here's a summary of each lie:
1. People Care What Company They Work For (Truth - People care what teams they work for.)
2. The Best Plan Wins (Truth - The Best Intelligence Wins)
3. The Best Companies Cascade Goals (Truth - People will not be encouraged to attain goals set forth by others. Measuring goal attainment throughout the year isn't a valid approach, as goal attainment is binary, either goals or met or they are not.)
4. The Best People Are Well Rounded (Truth - High performers are typically really good at a particular thing and should not strive for high performance in all areas.)
5. People Want Feedback (Truth - We learn most in our comfort zones. It's where we are most creative and insightful.) - I found this one to be the most substantial lie outlined the book, just slightly more crucial than #4.
6. People Can Reliably Rate Other People
7. People Have Potential (Truth - People can have momentum, which can vary over time, but the concept of potential, a binary statement, is harmful and misleading.)
8. Work Life Balance Matters Most (Truth - Loving at least part of your work matters most.)
9. Leadership is a Thing (GASP!) - (Truth - Followership is a thing, and no two leaders create it the same way.)

What am I going to do differently because of this book?

I will attempt to focus more on building on my team's momentum and celebrating areas of strength and success, instead of looking for opportune moments for coaching and only giving feedback on shortcomings.

Even though one could derive many changes to implement, I think in the spirit of not going with too many too quickly, this one is the biggest one that will make the most impact. Pareto would be proud.

It's a well paced book, and since it's divided into chapters for each lie, then if you just can't buy into what you're reading, skip ahead to the next lie. For me, I saw validity in all of the theories, even some of the example companies, Chic Fil A / Facebook, may not be the best examples people will get behind.

If you want the ideas of the book, but just can't sit down and read through it, checkout the HBR Idea Casts episodes from the past few months. Several of them are offshoots of the principles in the book. I guess that's good marketing!
4 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Good read

Like
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

In search of spikes.

Beautifully written and easy to read.

Offering 9 nines lies about work may sounds like a Listicle headline, but Goodall and Buckingham provide actual empirical and historical evidence to expose the real nature of work.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Very good book to read for our crazy workplaces

Someone recommended this book to me and it provided very good insight on how dysfunctional many businesses are in implementing "key performance indicators". I recommend highly.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Best book I've read for a while

A refreshing look at employee engagement and what management must do to keep up.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Good ideas, broken down on tangible components, well worth reading

I love the candid and "nakedness" of these lies, truth, and discussions. I am sure regardless of where you are in your career if you are a leader of people or leader of self, this book has a lot to offer. Even if you don't agree with everything, there is a lot of truth and exciting ideas here.
However, if you are about halfway through your career and have gone through good/bad leaders, successful and failures both at work and in life, you will get so much more from this book.
I have already purchased the book for my whole team. I believe the thought process that starts after reading this book is incredible and helps you and your team to grow and improve.
Another aspect is that the authors' perspective is based on real experience and not theoretical understanding of reality. It is great that they haven't focused on the Google/Apple/Facebook type of companies. This book is about regular companies doing a great job and working in a competitive environment both on finding the best talent as well as growing their revenue.
Well worth reading!
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Start loving your Work

As the world of work has changed in our digital world so has the need for leaders to do things differently. Employees are the lifeblood of organizations and after reading Nine Lies About Work you will be able to understand and navigate through the process of changing your business and engaging employees.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Must read for everyone in management or not

Great book, similar but different than my other Holy Grail book of management and corporate culture “First Brake All The Rules “
Kudos to both authors and thank you for having courage of telling it like it is
✓ Verified Purchase

Blew away many of my assumptions and things I thought I knew

A well written and truly thought provoking book. At some level each of the 9 lies were things that I do or once did buy into and this book turned every one of them on their heads. My mind was officially blown as I read and re-read
it. It is written in such a way that it is easy to grasp how each of the lies have grown to have a life of their own and how each of the truths can be applied in our work today. Absolutely loved the book!

Related Books